An Instrument of Peace
on St. Francis, and forgiveness, and prayer
I don’t know what to make of it, but the two times I have gone on pilgrimage, I have been greeted quite personally by a prayer. The first time, in 2014, I traveled for two weeks to the Holy Land with the solemn intent to speak nary a word in prayer, only to find that the Lord’s Prayer continued to nudge me. It felt like a gracious and gentle nudge, and even a wise one, so I dropped my wordless vow and instead carried that prayer around with me as a constant companion for the next thirteen days.
It was such a powerful experience, I came home and wrote a whole book about it. That book poured out of me like new wine, and the entire manuscript was completed in about six weeks. I don’t expect anything like that ever to happen to me again. It was almost magical, certainly mystical.
That prayer found me at what my friend Sheila would call a “hinge” time. I was swinging between identities, having lost a pastoral one and not quite found whatever would come next. Who was I without the church I was known for leading? Who was left, after the title and the busyness and the internet fodder all melted away? The prayer didn’t fix any of that, or make the pain of leaving a church I still love and miss every day any easier. But it was my faithful companion, and despite the absolute cheesiness of saying it, I think it’s how Jesus and I came to be even closer soul friends. I just know him differently after that experience praying his prayer in the places he walked, and all the ways it followed me home. That prayer is a home for me now.
I was thinking of none of this when I hurriedly packed my bags with two days notice to co-lead a group on pilgrimage to the Camino Primitivo in Spain. What I was thinking about was if I needed an extra pair of hiking socks, and if I had rescheduled everyone to cover for the two weeks I’d be gone, and what emails I needed to return. I was thinking about my friend John, who had lovingly and diligently planned this trip, and who now needed to stay home to be present to his mother-in-law as she crossed over to the other side of life.
The Camino Primitivo is one of the least crowded of the Santiago pilgrimage trails, which is a blessing in the solitary glory it provides. The downside, to my great dismay, is that hardly any of the churches and chapels were open along the way. Here I was, thinking I’d pop into a bunch of old churches (my favorite thing) as kind of a jazz interlude in the midst of all that walking. But for the entire first week of the trip, my prayers were my own, forming under rhythmic thumps on dirt as the miles rolled one into the next.
When we arrived in Melide, I was delighted to find that the cathedral was open. Two men were painting the front doors a gorgeous green, one that made my whole being light up, and I pondered asking them for the color. (Benjamin Moore, in Spain? I doubted it.) I went in, eager both to sit and to pray, so I took off my pack and pulled out the kneeler. I prayed the Lord’s Prayer, familiar and warm. Afterward, within moments of entering into silence, I was greeted by familiar words.
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”
This gentle nudge felt so familiar, I could almost feel my face flush. And so, without even thinking, I let the prayer all the way in.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
Oh Divine Master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it’s in giving that we receive. And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it’s in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
I have prayed this prayer more times than I can count. I’ve sung it, too, as it was one of our favorite songs at Journey, my beloved church. Most times, I do sing it as I pray it, with the sound of Rhealyn’s voice in my head, and the rest of the band, and the feeling in my chest of all the love in that room as we sang it. I have nothing but the fondest love and memories of this prayer. I want it said at my funeral. And yet it has never felt the way it did in those moments. Perhaps it has something to do with being so palpably in a world filled with war, hatred, injury, doubt, despair, darkness, sadness, I don’t know. What I know is that, in the blink of an eye, I felt changed.
Not changed in any flashy way, or frankly in any way that will make much of a difference, externally. But something shifted. It was as if it was a message from my soul to say: this is what we are here for. This is what we are to do.
My God, how difficult that is. And how worthy.
What the nudge said, in no uncertain terms, was to stop making excuses. There is a way to walk, a way to live, a way to respond. You already know what it is, so just do it. It’s not complicated. It’s not contingent upon the clown in office, or the headlines. It’s this, and only this, always, throughout all time. This is his way.
Sometimes I stare out my office window and flatly mourn that I belong to a religion that is actively doing such harm in my country. I bounce between feeling rage at those who seem to have entirely lost the plot and misread all that scripture they seem so intent on spouting, and overcome with sadness that there is this beautiful way Jesus tried to model for us that we have quite frankly failed to live out.
If we had been more faithful, would their hypocrisy be this possible?
But that is only half of the problem. The other half, the one I am less likely to interrogate, is how I haven’t lived it out, either. I’ve sat in my office with a line of philosophers and theologians and political historians in my head who can prove why what they are doing is wrong and why the way I see it is better and how I can’t just let them get away with things without my rage-filled disdain.
But oh, the crashing conviction on my kneeling knees was that Jesus taught us in prayer to say that we don’t forgive the people who are deserving of it, which is frankly how I’d like to do it, but as we have been forgiven, which is, unfortunately, a relentless barrage of abundant love about the whole thing.
My constant and stubborn refrain has been: “But justice! But justice! But justice!” And so, Saint Francis was beckoned from the ancestors to come to me kneeling on a pew and whisper into my recalcitrant heart, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”
It was so gentle, and so convicting. There is no time for the rest of it. This is what we are here for. This is what we are to do.
This was said in such love. With such clarity. As if the only way to justice was this way.
I have this gnawing feeling that God has been trying to tell me this for a while now. I don’t know how many times I missed the memo, choosing instead to remain steaming in my own self-righteousness. All I can say is that I heard it clearly in that pew with no cushions after twelve miles of hiking in Melide.
I am listening now.
Most days, I’m praying these words, carrying them with me through my day and letting them carry me, too. I hope that these words, in time, become a home for me.
And when it feels hard, if not impossible, to meet hatred with love, or injustice and injury with pardon and grace, I will try to shore up within my soul the greenness of that door and the greenness of that soul-space that whispered so gently how it is possible, and also beautiful, to try.
Beautiful!